Tissue Paper Collages

I worked as a preschool teacher for most of the last 20 years, and one of my favorite children’s authors is Eric Carle (http://www.ericcarle.com)

Eric Carle has a unique method of illustrating his books. And I have been trying to copy the technique and use it in other forms.

He uses painted tissues to make collages. What I love about the technique is the texture that it creates in each picture.

He begins painting by painting the tissue paper. He waters down the paint and uses broad strokes to paint the paper. He applies for one color and let’s is dry before applying the second color.  (I usually don’t have the patience for this and I like how it looks when the colors blend.)

Then to make the collage illustration, he draws out the picture onto tracing paper or a transparent paper. He then places the drawing on top of the tissue paper and cuts through both tracing paper and tissue paper one section at a time. As each section is cut out, the tracing paper is also used as a guide to paste the tissue paper onto a white illustration board or poster board.

I am not very good at drawing myself, and while I would love to be able to create collages with the amount of detail that he does I usually stick to using the tissue paper to decorate notebook covers for prayer journals or note taking.